


My Boyfriend Who Lives in Canada

by thereweregiants



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Military, M/M, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-27 01:25:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16692727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereweregiants/pseuds/thereweregiants
Summary: Liana is sure that Jesse's boyfriend existssomewhere...though perhaps just in his own head.





	My Boyfriend Who Lives in Canada

**Author's Note:**

> i am so sick yall  
> and yet have to drive across state lines tomorrow to visit the fam for turkey day  
> so I wrote the tamest safest little thing ever to distract myself from everything  
> don't write and NyQuil it is not worth it
> 
> title adapted from [Avenue Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLlLaJlk56k)  
> soundtrack to writing was my own chest coughs someone please put me out of my misery

Liana Guinto stood with her hands on her hips and looked at the hundreds of steel rods in front of her, narrowing her eyes. “Jesse!”

A shaggy brown head poked its way around a doorway, “Yes, LiLi, light o’ my life?”

“You wouldn’t happen to know where the quarter inch round bar stock that I had specifically set aside for myself went, do you?”

Eyes widened and the head vanished, followed by the fading sound of running footsteps. Liana rubbed her forehead. Jesse was a great guy, one of her closest friends here in the MFA program, in fact. That didn’t stop her from occasionally wanting to kill him, however.

The sound of footsteps returned, this time accompanied by the sound of clanking. Liana turned to see Jesse with his arms full of six foot long thin steel rods, some of them already shaped into gentle curves.

“I am so sorry, darlin’, I didn’t know that they were yours. Why didn’t you put a note on them?”

Liana sighed as she spied a dirty yellow sticky note on the floor and nodded to it as she took some of Jesse’s burden. “I did, it must have fallen off. Here, I only need about half of this right now, you take the rest including what you rolled and just buy me some more when you get a chance.” She cocked her head as they sorted through the metal. “What are you making, anyways? You don’t normally use round stock.”

Jesse made a face as he tucked the stock under his arm, absently wiping the grease off onto his pants as he did. “I can’t tell you.”

“Seriously? We’re all halfway into our theses, it’s not like I’m going to steal your ideas. Plus, this is me.”

“I know, and I love you for it. No, it’s a...thing. Dr Franklin says I can’t tell anyone about it.”

“Ugh, whatever with that old stick-up-the-ass, Jesse.” She turned her large brown eyes on him and opened them wide, blinking her lashes hopefully. “Please, my dearest studio husband of mine?”

Jesse narrowed his own eyes, which were an odd grey-brown color that Liana could never decide the shade of, before rolling them and gesturing. “Fine, but if Franklin finds out I’m blaming you.”

“I’ll say I threatened you under pain of death.”

“Well, funny you should say that…” Jesse unlocked the door to his studio, gesturing inside with a flourish.

Liana entered, and stopped short. “That’s...Jesse, that’s a lot of guns. On school grounds.” The room at first seemed filled with them, but they really were just on one table. Little snub nosed revolvers and long barrelled pistols and everything in between as long as it was a handgun, spread out whole and in pieces on top of the scarred studio table wood. That was...not something schools looked well on in this day and age.

“And that would be why Dr Franklin doesn’t want anyone knowing about it.”

“Jesse, this can’t be legal - what the hell are you even doing?”

“It is, I swear. I have permits. They’re all decommissioned, part of the local sheriff’s office buyback program or antiques. And none of them are functional, no firin’ pins or magazines or ammunition.”

Liana eyed him. “Like you couldn’t make any of that yourself.”

He shrugged. “I don’t think Franklin quite realized that when he let me do this.”

“What is this, exactly?” Jesse and Liana were in the same cohort of their MFA, and were preparing their final thesis shows in order to graduate in the spring. Everyone had been so close moving through the last three years, but now in the depths of their own work they had all split up to do their own thing

“Transformation, of things that are meant for pain and destruction into somethin’ less functional.” He went on to talk about how he was manipulating and forging out the guns until they were uselessly decorative instead of instruments of death. It...made sense, with Jesse.

He was an odd duck, even for an MFA program. He was in his late 20s like Liana - not particularly unusual, their cohort had everyone from 45 year old Marc to 24 year old Ellie who had graduated a year early from college. Unlike most of them who had been working on their careers as artists before going back for their masters, however, Jesse had been in the military. He didn’t talk much about his service though he did say how important it was to him, always with a touch of bitterness to his tone. She thought his feelings about it managed to find their way into his work, though - there was something almost melancholy about everything he made, a thread of sadness and longing running through his work that was in contrast to his generally cheerful demeanor.

“...anyways, I’m just hoping to get that last piece done in time for the exhibition.”

“Yeah, you’re right near the end, in May?”

“Yep.”

“Well, I’m sure it’ll all go fine. You have a week more than me, at least. You got anyone coming up for it, friends or the, uh, boyfriend?” Liana knew Jesse didn’t have any family left. Neither did she, other than her fiancée - her family stopped talking to her years ago when she came out.

“I’ve got some friends comin’ up, definitely. Gabe…” Jesse’s face screwed up a little before smoothing out. “It’ll depend on where he is, then. He’s in Alberta right now and then he’s in Mexico, but that’s as far as I know. At least we’re on the same continent for a bit.”

Liana was...skeptical. She liked Jesse a lot and never thought of him as a liar about anything - the man was actually painfully honest to a fault - but he got _strange_ when talking about his supposed boyfriend. He was initially mentioned back during their first year when Liana invited Jesse out on a double date with her, Naomi, and Naomi’s friend Ben. She’d known at that point that Jesse was bi, but instead of just declining he stammered out something about having a boyfriend and ran away. When she tried to delicately ask him about it later he wouldn’t look her in the face and said something about being in the closet in the military.

She got that, to an extent. Liana grew up queer in a state that didn’t like it and got thrown out of her home when she came out to her family. DADT was decades in the past, though, and the current Chief of Staff of the Army was an out-and-proud lesbian who had installed a military equality policy on sexuality unlike any other in the world. Jesse was just weird about it.

Despite saying they'd been with each other for years, Jesse didn’t have any pictures of his boyfriend and him together, didn’t have any of him solo, either. He didn’t even have drawn pictures of the guy, and Jesse had tons of sketchbooks full of strangers that they saw on the subway and in restaurants, not to mention all his friends - there were dozens and dozens of drawings of Liana herself. The guy never called or texted that Liana saw - she and Jesse even lived together their second year - and never came to any events. Jesse said he was still in the military and was constantly traveling, but really. Three years of being friends, and Liana hadn’t seen a single shred of evidence that the guy actually existed.

Liana had thought for awhile that Jesse might be asexual and trying to hide it, but she’d been told enough scandalous tales from his youth to take that idea off the table. Not to mention having to break him of the habit of leaving his door open during ...private time when they lived together. Jesse was a good looking, charming guy that wouldn’t want for a date if he tried, so finally Liana just threw up her hands and let him have his little deception, for whatever reason he wanted to have it.

Walking through his studio space, Liana stopped by one in-progress piece that lay on the table. It had once been what looked like a large, old-fashioned six shooter pistol, but the end of the barrel was blown apart and forged out. He must have added material to the steel to get it as long as it was, but the joins were invisible. Jesse’s focus within sculpture was large-scale metalworks and blacksmithing, and he was very good at what he did.

The shards at the end of the barrel thinned and twisted, becoming delicate marigolds with multitudes of tiny petals. The leaves occasionally were cut out into elongated skulls or patterns that reminded Liana of the calaveras of her childhood. “ _¿Día de Muertos?_ ” she asked, pointing to the sculpture. Jesse shrugged, then nodded.

“Something like that. It’s a little of me, little of...someone important to me,” Jesse said, fingers running over the dark metal in a practiced motion. He frowned at the patina that came off on his hands, wiping his fingers absently on his increasingly filthy jeans.

“What’s on there, Black Magic?”

“Just gun blue. I think I’m going to take it off, though. It needs...something else. Rust, maybe. It’s not there yet.”

Liana nodded and moved on, sensing Jesse didn’t want to talk much about that particular piece. She let him explain many of his other works, listening with interest. His concept was far tighter than hers, and if nothing else she was getting motivation to work harder on her own thesis.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Liana was exhilaratingly drunk. Her thesis defense to her advisors went great - even passing with honors - and her exhibition opening went off flawlessly. Naomi took off work to come, and Naomi’s whole family (who had happily adopted her into their ranks when finding out about Liana’s blood relatives) showed up to cheer her on. They celebrated at an afterparty at Liana and her roommate Fred’s apartment with wine, cheese, and more wine. It was a show opening, after all - wine and cheese were required.

Everyone had trickled out, save for Liana, Jesse, and Fred. Fred was completely passed out on the floor, Jesse was stretched out on the couch and Liana was tucked into an armchair, drifting in and out of sleep. The degree she’d worked three long years towards was virtually done, and she was feeling warm and comfortable and sleepy. She woke up a little to hear Jesse’s voice rumbling. Glancing over, she saw he was curled on his side, with his phone clutched in one large hand.

“...miss you, okay, an’ it’s so much worse when I saw all of LiLi’s friends and family there. She was closeted too an’ her family abandoned her an’...” his voice drifted off into some wet snuffles. “I'm not in anymore okay, an’ you’re not my boss and maybe we don’ have to hide an’ I know you’re on mission up in Toronto but it’s driving distance an’ my thing is next week an’, an’...” his voice slurred until it drifted off into heavy breathing. Jesse could hold his liquor like no one else, but he was a lightweight when it came to wine.

Liana glanced over to see the phone dangling from one hand, still on the presumed voicemail call. Jesse had just spent the night before complaining about his phone bill, so she decided to do him a solid and keep him from using up any more money on what was surely long distance. Rolling off the armchair, she reached over and grabbed his phone, hitting the call end button. She frowned at the screen in confusion. It said that he had called 000-000-0000. That...wasn’t a number. Was he talking to dead air the whole time? Maybe his boyfriend was less of a deception and more of a delusion. She tucked the phone under his arm and clambered back into the armchair, too tired to find her bed.

-x-x-x-x-x-

The opening for Jesse’s exhibition was in half an hour, and the line at the coffee shop was taking forever. Liana finally got her precious mocha, and threaded her way through the crowd to make it outside. Turning, she ran into a wall and ricocheted backwards, mocha somehow still clutched in one hand unharmed. Liana looked up - and up - at the wall, which turned out to be a person with coffee spilled all around him.

He was tall and broad, densely muscled under his dark clothing if how Liana bounced off was anything to go by. He had a harsh, scarred face, but his voice was kind as he steadied Liana from falling over “You okay? Didn’t see you there.”

“I’m fine, I’m fine. I’m sorry about your coffee though - can I buy you another cup?”

The man shook his head. “Thanks, but I have somewhere to be.” He paused. “Are you familiar with the campus?”

“Relatively? I don’t know the details of where all the undergrad stuff is, but I can probably help. Where do you need to go?”

The man pulled out a ...thing from inside his coat. It was like if a phone and a tablet had a baby, and then got wrapped in thick rubber and metal armor. It looked like something a spy would use. He tapped a few buttons and squinted at the screen. “Normal Street? That can’t be right. The Shaffer Building?”

Liana laughed a little. “No, that’s right - Normal Street is back from when this used to be a normal school, a teacher’s college, a few centuries back. Are you going to Jesse’s exhibition, then?”

The man started a bit, then looked at her with a penetrating eye. Liana felt uncomfortably like she was under a spotlight. “You know...Jesse?”

“Oh yeah, we’re in the same program.” She stuck out a hand. “Liana.”

Her hand was enveloped in callused, broad fingers that wrapped completely around her own. “Reyes. Pleasure.”

They walked south along towards the main campus, Reyes considerately slowing down in favor of Liana’s far shorter legs. “You like the school here?”

“I do. Good teachers, good students. Just finished my own show last week. I’m almost not terrified to enter the real world.”

“And you’re friends with Mc- with Jesse? He’s...doing well? Happy here?”

“He is. We’re pretty close, even lived together for awhile. His show is going to be really great, his concept is pretty rad. I know he said he was having some people come up, you guys are friends?”

“Something like that. I didn’t think I’d be able to come but. It’s his last thing here and I missed so much already.” Liana wouldn’t think that such an intimidating-looking man could sound so quietly wistful, but there he was. They walked in comfortable silence the rest of the way to the gallery.

Reyes followed Liana through the twisting stairwells into the basement of the gallery, a large and weirdly comforting presence behind her. They’d only exchanged a few words, but Liana liked the guy and could see how Jesse could be friends with him. She wasn’t sure how they knew each other - the guy had to be a couple of decades older than them - but given his straight-backed bearing she guessed he was from Jesse’s military days.

Liana stepped off to the side to give hugs to Marc and Yasmine, then wound her way through the crowd to find Jesse talking with Dr Franklin and Dr Schall. His face lit up when he spotted her, and he wrapped her up in a long hug.

“Passed with high honors,” he said with a grin.

Liana thumped him on the arm. “Like any of us expected anything else. We’re all proud of you, babe.”

They were turned towards the wall, and Liana saw the piece with flowers that she’d been looking at earlier mounted in front of them. It was expanded and refined, traces of gold leaf and rust intertwining and dancing along the design. “Jesse, it turned out beautiful,” she whispered.

Jesse smiled a bit, though it never quite reached his eyes. “Yeah. Don’t know if the person it was made for will ever see it, but it’s done at least.”

“Oh, hey, I met one of your friends.” Liana craned her head, but there were enough people she couldn’t see where Reyes disappeared to. “Seemed a little out of his element, but a nice guy.”

Jesse’s mouth twitched up in a crooked smile. “That’s how most of my non-art friends are. What was his name?”

Liana was about to answer when she finally spotted Reyes in front of a piece just a dozen feet down from them. “There he is. Hey, Reyes!” she called out.

Jesse’s head jerked. “What did you say -” he started, then he saw who Liana was pointing at. He almost looked like he’d been punched for a moment, before whispering “ _Gabe_ ” and flat out sprinting over to Reyes.

Oh.

Reyes turned just in time for Jesse to slam into him. Even after having spent years drawing portraits, Liana’s not quite sure of the expression that she would assign to Reyes - no, _Gabe’s_ face. His arms wrapped slowly around Jesse, holding him almost delicately like he might not be quite real, or might disappear at any moment. Jesse pulled back just enough to slide his hands up and tug Gabe’s head forward to meet his own. Gabe was stiff at first, like this wasn’t something he was comfortable doing in public, but after a few seconds his whole body seemed to relax into the kiss. Liana knew intellectually that the gallery was full of dozens of people, that the lighting was specifically directed towards the pieces. In that moment, though, everything seemed to dim down in favor of the two men tightly wrapped around each other into a single figure, a pillar of quiet in the chaos.

Someone stepped in front of her and Liana lost track of the two in favor of seeing a few graduated friends who had come up for the opening. Naomi finally showed up, and they wandered around, Liana doing her best to remember what Jesse had told her about each piece to explain to her fiancée. The gallery was just about empty when Naomi tugged on her arm to leave. Liana looked around to see where Jesse was to say a final goodbye before leaving.

He and Gabe were standing in front of the flower gun. Gabe’s arm was draped comfortably over Jesse’s shoulders while Jesse’s arm was folded up so he could thread his fingers through Gabe’s. He was explaining something, his free hand pointing and gesturing to this and that. Gabe nodded along, the quiet rumble of his voice occasionally asking a question. For the most part he seemed content to rest his lips against Jesse’s temple, arm occasionally tightening as Jesse’s animated gesturing pulled him away.

Liana didn’t know what their story was, but she could tell there was more going on than she’d ever find out about. Accidentally catching Gabe’s eye as she took a step towards the exit, Liana gave an awkward little wave.. Gabe’s eyes crinkled for just a moment in a smile before he turned back to Jesse, and Liana let herself be led away by Naomi. She could always text Jesse later, it looked like he had some catching up to do. With a real person, even.

**Author's Note:**

> concept for Jesse's show adapted from [IMAGINE Peace Now](http://www.imaginepeacenow.org/) \- an exhibition put together in 2016 where decommissioned guns were turned into works of art to create commentary on gun violence. i had several friends have pieces in it and it was super moving and if you ever get a chance to check out some of the works you should


End file.
